i-Yoga with Ayee Domingo at Dragonfly Yoga Studio

Passing YogiEvery once in a while in Cebu, a passing yoga teacher conducts a free class and shares her yoga to the community. We are introduced to something fresh and new, aside from meeting new people from the local circle. Such was the case with the visit of Ayee Domingo who owns i-Yoga in Manila.

i-YogaI guess it would be fair to say none of the 15 or so participants had any idea what kind of yoga we were to experience. But like all yogis, we were open to anything put on the table. I looked-up her yoga on the internet and what I got was, "incorporates energy-cultivation breathwork with yoga postures and relaxation techniques". How is it different from...let's say Ashtanga where we employ Ujjayi breath in weaving the asanas through our vinyasas? I was curious.

Ayee DomingoThe first thing that caught my attention was that she was pretty...or in my birds-and-the-bees parlance, she was YogaHub material - Cebu's pretty people seem to be clustered there. She was articulate with a commanding grasp of English. She knew what to say, but at times, she was talking too fast - perhaps her mind was racing (like most productive people who find 24 hours in a day utterly insufficient). In my thought bubble, I was saying, "Ayee, lose the script...talk to me."

The PracticeThe practice was unlike a led yoga class. It more focused on pranayama (breath) rather than asana (posture) - more like Kundalini as we spent most times seated doing a kriya (a completed set of repetitive movements). It also reminded me of the Art of Living 3-day workshop in Sudarshan Kriya as we employed advance breathing - specially Bahya Khumbaka (cesssation of the breath after exhalation). Make no mistake about it - Pranayama/Khumbaka is powerful and offers numerous benefits:

increased blood circulation - as the breath is held back, oxygen in the blood is depleted. The body demands more blood for more oxygen. Blood rushes through and expands collapsed capillaries, unclogs blood vessels and flushes out stagnant blood in the finer blood vessels. Increased blood circulation follows.

delays the ageing process - human respiratory rate is 12-16 breaths/min, giving a life span of 70-80 years. Holding back the breath means fewer breaths per minute. As a lifespan is measured by the number of breaths taken, this practice extends life or delays the ageing process.

detoxification - Pranayama, especially kumbhaka, expels impurities from the body. The purification process is accelerated that occasionally the body produces sores in coping with the extra elimination of toxins. This is partly the reason for the so-called adverse reactions of this type.

too many to list down

Ending ThoughtsWith Ayee's karma yoga (free yoga), Cebu got a glimpse of what I would call pranayama kriya. It looks deceptively simple, but quite powerful - anything dealing with pranayama is powerful (given my Superman-Effect when I toyed with Pranayama back in Sagada).

Thank you Ayee! I hope you enjoyed your stay in Cebu and I hope you come back.

Ayee Domingo(Apr 29, 2014) Dear Gigit, it was a pleasure to meet you all. I love your site as it is personal as it is informative. Thank you for your insights, feedback and comments. You described the benefits of what we did exactly :-) Let us join together in a class again soon. In the service and support OUR lives. Namaste :-)

Cebu City, Philippines

tourist attractions

Tops - hilltop offering panoramic view of the city

Taoist Temple - temple on a hillslope in Lahug with panoramic view of the city